


a look, revisited

by brella



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-26 09:35:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17139371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/brella
Summary: It happens on graduation day. Tadashi’s hair is longer and his sneakers are brand new and he has spent the past month thinking about what it means to lose things.Seven first kisses.





	a look, revisited

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Marks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marks/gifts).



> Dear Marks,
> 
> Vengeance.
> 
> Love, 
> 
> Gwen

I.

 

It happens in Tsukishima's backyard, after dark. They’ve just gotten home from their second summer training camp. Tadashi is sitting next to Tsukishima on the porch in his pajamas, leaning back on his palms, one foot perched on the edge of the wood and the other askew in the dirt. The leftover heat of the midsummer day seeps into his heel. There is a dull, persistent ache in his elbow, the remnant of a strain back in March. He's looking at how the night has settled into the full green leaves of the camellia bush. 

"How's your arm?" Tsukishima asks him. He's in his pajamas, too, plain shorts and that t-shirt with the tiny moon on it that Tadashi’s always liked. The question is deceptively casual, but Tadashi has learned its translations; this particular variation means  _you weren't pushing yourself today, were you_. 

Tadashi is only looking at the camellia bush because he's not sure he could bear looking at Tsukishima, because looking at Tsukishima would probably make him remember the Tsukishima of a few hours ago: sweat darkening the hair at his temples, a calculated passion sharpening his gaze—how he had maybe not blinked, not even once, and how the awareness of this had nearly folded Tadashi’s transfixed heart in half, the beginnings of a paper plane. 

It folds again when he feels Tsukishima's fingers close around his wrist, bent cautiously around the curve of it, his palm as warm as the earth below them. The moths beating against the porch light cast erratic shadows across Tsukishima's face, and this time, Tadashi can't think of a good reason not to keep looking. 

"You," Tsukishima says, and then ducks his eyes, frowning at Tadashi’s knee, squeezing his wrist a little tighter, "you need to take care of yourself." 

 _Look who’s talking_ , Tadashi wants to say;  _I'm not the one who kept playing with a sprained finger or a rolled ankle or a bruised nose or busted glasses because I didn’t want to let anyone down_ —

What Tadashi does instead is draw his leg up onto the wood so that he can angle his torso toward Tsukishima and kiss him on the mouth. He loses awareness of everything else—the crickets, the stars, the faint smell of the lilac tree, his elbow's memory of a pain born of devotion he can't unlearn. Tsukishima remains completely still—but when Yamaguchi half-opens his eyes, he sees that Tsukishima’s are closed.

 

 

* * *

 

 

II. 

 

It happens in the storage room, during cleanup. It's after 8 PM already, and a moment ago Kei had been thinking about how annoying it is that he'll have to stay up late finishing his homework when all he wants to do is take an obscenely long bath and sleep in until noon, and about how second years should be freed of these demands, and about how maybe when Yamaguchi gets elected captain next year (which he will), he’ll use his unique position to change these unjust laws. 

At the present moment, however, he is thinking first about how close Yamaguchi’s nose is to his own, and second about how heavy Yamaguchi is, splayed out on top of him.

The mops are chaotically scattered next to them, one wooden handle still caught at Yamaguchi’s ankle, where it had tripped him. One of them had hit Tsukishima in the face. The room smells like sweat and rubber and floor cleaner and, faintly, the hand cream Yamaguchi uses for his calluses. 

“Are you okay?!” Yamaguchi is squawking, palms making a slapping sound as they scramble for purchase. His knee shifts at Kei’s thigh, and Kei briefly forgets which direction is up. “I’m so sorry, Tsukki; I knew I shouldn’t have tried to get all the mops at once but Hinata dared me and—”

Kei knows, logically, that there is no real chance that he’s concussed. It had been less of a grievous collision and more of a misstep, Yamaguchi pitching forward and trying to grab his t-shirt to save himself and instead dragging Kei down with him. But a concussion seems like a practical, fitting excuse for what he does next, blinking up at Yamaguchi’s face, his freckles and his lips and his eyelashes and his teeth, all little more than an inch or so away, the presence of them nearly alive in the space between their faces that Kei suddenly can’t stand to leave open. 

He lifts his head off of the floor until his mouth is on Yamaguchi’s mouth, forceful and impulsive and stupid and exactly what he wants, and has wanted for more time than he might ever be able to admit. 

Yamaguchi’s taste is unexpected. Not in a bad way, just—new. 

Kind of... clean. 

It only lasts a second. Yamaguchi’s lips end up kind of squished. As soon as Kei’s able to process the sensation, he comes to his senses and pulls away, shoulders tensing with what can best be described as five-alarm panic. 

He pushes himself up on his elbows and starts to say to Yamaguchi’s bewildered crimson face, “I—”

“Did Tsukishima and Yamaguchi go home early? Those lazy bastards. Is that everything?” 

“Yep! I’m gonna lock up!” 

He doesn’t even get to finish his excuse, whatever pathetic half-truth it might have been. Hinata springs over to the door and it rumbles shut, plunging the closet into total darkness. It takes a while for Kei’s eyes and mind to adjust, but in the interim he is excruciatingly aware of Yamaguchi’s forearm resting against the side of his face; Yamaguchi’s chest as it shifts against his; and Yamaguchi’s fingers, pressed into the fabric of his jersey, steady. 

He is excruciatingly aware of everything. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

III.

 

It happens in Tadashi’s room. There’s still one semester left in their second year. Tsukishima is cross-legged on the floor, leaned up against the wall, reading aloud a passage they’re supposed to write a response to for English class tomorrow; Tadashi is facing him, hugging a pillow. The syllables sound unusual and mesmerizing, like always—like Tsukishima’s a different person, with different thoughts and wants. The sound fills Tadashi’s stomach with a warm, heavy, melancholy longing that he hasn’t been able to shake for an hour.

“How do you do that?” he asks, marveling. English words just look like a jumble of weird lines to him. Tsukishima makes sense of them effortlessly, and always has, anatomizing them so cleanly that Tadashi can’t help but understand them a little better, in structure if not in meaning:  _ad-jec-tive_ ,  _par-ti-ci-ple_ ,  _im-per-fect-tense_.

Tsukishima lifts and drops one shoulder. “Practice?”

Practice. Tadashi dwells on that word, a little, and holds the pillow tighter. 

Tsukishima opens his mouth to keep reading. Tadashi watches his face instead of listening. 

Then he says, “Tsukki.” 

Tsukishima pauses, arches his eyebrows without looking up, and answers, “What?”

And Tadashi boldly says, “C’mere.”

For a moment, Tsukishima remains completely still, the book pried open in his hand. Tadashi considers digging a hole for himself in the ground and living there for all time. Someone’s lawnmower is running, a muted rumble in the blooming silence, and the clock on Tadashi’s desk is quietly, cautiously ticking.

Tsukishima closes the book carefully, sets it on the floor beside his bent knee, and does as he’s told. 

Tadashi gulps down a breath before he lays his hand over the dip where Tsukishima’s neck meets his jaw. The concept of the next logical move paralyzes him, so he ends up just sitting there, holding Tsukishima’s face, like a moron. 

Tsukishima clicks his tongue. Leave it to him to sound exasperated with Tadashi  _now_ , of all times, but leave it to Tadashi to find it reassuring rather than reproachful. 

His eyes hood, but do not shut. He dips his head. The sigh that he releases gives a faint, impossible shudder. When Tadashi’s mind returns to him, he finds that the bed frame is pressed against his back, and Tsukishima’s hand is on his knee, and his tongue is on Tsukishima’s tongue, his fingers in Tsukishima’s hair, his mouth welcoming the soft and satisfied noise that gathers at the back of Tsukishima’s throat. Outside, the lawnmower keeps running. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

IV.

 

It happens on graduation day. Tadashi’s hair is longer and his sneakers are brand new and he has spent the past month thinking about what it means to lose things. It’s been hard to think about anything else—even with exams and university applications and helping Yachi scout a new manager and going to Nationals a third time and heading into his fourth year of being miserably in love with his best friend—but the melancholy stirring inside of him still feels unplanned, ponderous.

The outdoor hallway is empty. He can hear the squeaking of sneakers from the gymnasium up ahead—the first- and second-years practicing, just as he’d told them to, even though he and Tsukishima and Hinata and Kageyama and Yachi wouldn’t be with them anymore.

He abruptly lifts both of his arms over his head in the stretch Shimada-san had taught him on his first night on that makeshift court behind the supermarket. The tube holding his diploma glints in the receding sunlight.

He exhales slowly as he lowers his arms again, trying to push the soreness from his stomach. _Count to ten_.

“Hey.”

Tadashi has to jump back a little bit when he spins around at the sound of Tsukishima’s voice at his shoulder, because Tsukishima is standing… _significantly_ closer than he’d anticipated.

“H-Hey!” he squawks. “Are you, um, going home?”

Tsukishima glances away; Tadashi doesn’t miss his fingers tensing around his own diploma, just for a second. “I guess.”

Some of his hair is sticking up, probably still mussed from when Hinata made him bend over so he could ruffle it—as top of their class, Tsukishima had given a short address during the ceremony, and this was the congratulatory gesture he’d earned. Unthinking, Tadashi reaches up and brushes it lightly down.

“Um,” Tsukishima says.

Tadashi yanks his hand back and stutters, face hot, “S-Sorry.”

He and Tsukishima stand frozen in the setting sun, with the sound of crows and the sneakers and Tadashi’s heart, slamming against his ribs.

Tsukishima opens his mouth, falls silent, and glances away again. Concern furrows Tadashi’s eyebrows before he can think to mask it.

“Are you okay?” he asks, tilting his head.

Tsukishima closes his mouth. He folds his lips, a tight, restrained pink line. He huffs shortly through his nose.

Something pangs in Tadashi’s chest. He recognizes that face. It’s the one Tsukishima makes when he’s trying to convince himself not to want something.

He doesn’t like that face. That face is… sad.

“Fine,” Tsukishima answers evenly, addressing the ground. “See you.”

Tadashi nods. _See you_. He’s never had to ask for something more concrete—they live close to each other, after all, and their schools will only be a thirty-minute train ride apart, and they have Skype and the whole unnamed summer ahead of them—so it won’t be so bad.

It will be fine, he tells himself, even as his eyes start to well up, even as a jagged mass begins to grow in his throat, even as he has to fight to answer over its edges: “Yep, see you, Tsukki!”

He makes it three steps before he feels a tug at his sleeve. He stumbles backwards with the pull, bumping against Tsukishima’s chest before he can right himself.

He starts to turn his head. “Tsukki, what—”

Whatever his question might have been, Tsukishima takes. Tadashi catches a glimpse of the resolute set of his expression for only a passing instant, and then Tsukishima’s expression and his analysis thereof become irrelevant.

Tsukishima’s kiss lands on him firmly, with great care. Tadashi realizes instantly that it is the result of a multitude of calculations and conjectures—several years’ worth of endless push-and-pull, over which push has finally won out. Tsukishima is kissing him; Tsukki is _kissing_ him at sunset on their graduation day and they’ve _graduated_ and during his address he had talked in a deceptively monotonous voice about learning courage and had looked right at Tadashi as he said it and Tadashi has so many _questions_ and—and Tsukishima pulls away.

Tadashi becomes dimly aware of Tsukishima’s finger at his chin, still tilting his head back. He must have done it so he could aim better. Tadashi stares at him, just an inch or so up, eyes darting frantically over every inch of his face for some kind of cue, some kind of signal that this is real, and isn’t just the five hundredth variation of the same dream he’s been having since junior high—

But it’s just Tsukishima’s face. Tsukishima’s face, Tadashi’s favorite in the whole world. Except it’s a little redder, and he’s kind of grimacing, as if preparing to jump for a block that, mistimed, could end with a ball to the nose. And Tadashi, lungs aching, can’t begin to assemble a word. 

His mouth is tingling. Tsukishima had been wearing chapstick; his mouth always cracks in the summer; Tadashi knows this. Tadashi knows so many of the facets and threads of which Tsukishima is comprised—but also, he thinks, gaping at Tsukishima’s red, pained, hopeful face, maybe he doesn’t know anything at all.

 

 

* * *

  

 

V. 

 

 

It happens on the court. Yamaguchi is crying. Hinata is crying. Kageyama is crying. Every nerve in Kei’s body is in overdrive, adrenaline and disbelief pumping all the way from his skull to his fingers. They’ve just become the first Karasuno third-years to win Nationals since the tenure of the Little Giant. 

There’s no way. The ref must have gotten mixed up. Called a ball wrong. Missed a foul. Forgotten which team is which. His brain hasn’t even shut off yet; he’s still in the midst of it, calculating, calculating. There has to be more. One more set. One more block. Something—

“ _Tsukki_!”

Yamaguchi vaults himself at Kei for a hug with such force that it knocks the wind out of him. He stumbles back, arms cuffing Yamaguchi around the middle for balance, except he accidentally lifts him off the ground and swings him to the side so that they’re facing away from the team. Calculating, calculating. Yamaguchi’s serves had won them a total of twenty points across five sets. Twenty points out of—out of—how many did it all add up to, that they won? Multiply twenty-five by—no, some sets ran over twenty-five—Yamaguchi had done so well, the blades of his shoulders shifting beneath his jersey, his dotted fingers spreading before each serve, altering his trajectory just when the other team would start to fall into the rhythm of the last one; he’d been practicing so hard, three years, last game, smiling, crying, winners, him, Kageyama, Yachi, Hinata,  _Yamaguchi_ —

Both of Yamaguchi’s palms are flat on Kei’s chest. Kei’s arms are still loosely encircling his lower back. Yamaguchi has freckles in new places, but the ones at the bridge of his nose are still the same. Kei knows because he is always, always looking at them.

They stare at each other, panting, sweating, thunderstruck. 

And then a hunger possesses Yamaguchi’s eyes. He wets his lips, swings up on the balls of his feet, and kisses him. 

Kei lets him. As a matter of fact, Kei kisses him back. He switches to breathing through his nose on pure instinct, without missing a beat. Yamaguchi is buzzing with life in his arms, shaking a little, laughing a little, breaking off to catch his breath only for Kei to snatch his mouth up again. Victory roars between his ribs, a luminous burst of galactic light, a universe forming, but something tells him it’s not just because of the volleyball match. 

“Seriously?” Hinata’s voice yelps from, in Kei’s estimation, a hundred miles behind him. “You had all this time and you’re doing it  _now_? Oi, Kageyama,  _quit crying_ —”

“Shut the hell up, Hinata! You’re crying, too!”

“Sorry!” Yamaguchi chirps. He does not sound sorry at all. 

They line up in order. Ukai and Takeda and Yachi at the end, Yachi passing an emotional Takeda a hankie that matches the one she’s wailing into. Yamaguchi, Kei, Hinata, Kageyama. The second-years. The first-years. 

As team captain, Yamaguchi gets to hold the trophy. He catches Kei’s eye when he does, face scrunching into a grin, instead of looking at the camera. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

VI. 

 

 

It happens in Kei’s apartment. Kei has been twenty-one for four months. It’s cold enough outside that there will be frost come morning, but the floor heater is on, oscillating. It is Yamaguchi's third and final day there, now that the spring Kanken exams are over. Each morning of Yamaguchi’s stay, Kei had woken up before him, and had only been able to get him out of bed by making him a pancake. 

It happens when Yamaguchi is at the door, getting ready to leave. His hair is cut short—shorter than Kei’s ever seen it in the however-many years he’s known him—and barely reaches his neck. He’s putting on one of his plain white sneakers. Kei is staring at the protrusion of his wrist bone, peeking just over the edge of his coat sleeve.

“I’ll text you when I get home,” Yamaguchi is saying; he flings Kei a bright, adoring grin that all but knocks him senseless. Kei is usually stronger than that, but he has not seen him in several months, so his defenses are weakened. “Thanks for hosting me, Tsukki! It was a huge help not to have to take the train in every morning to get to the testing center,  _and_  I got to see you!”

He chirps the last part so easily, with such warmth, like it is really and truly the best thing that’s ever happened to him. Kei wonders if it would give too much away if he slapped a hand over his heart to protect it from further ruthless assaults.

“Well,” Yamaguchi goes on, but he sounds more rueful now, tying his laces more slowly, “guess I’ll talk to you—”

_Later. Sometime. Whenever. A time that isn’t now, or tonight, or forever._ The mere thought of that stupid, indefinite sentiment fills Kei with such alarm and frustration that the best way he can express them is to pull Yamaguchi’s face up from where it’s bent over his other sneaker.

Yamaguchi’s eyes shine up at him, round and unguarded, and Kei holds him in place with both hands, thumbs pressed to the slopes of his cheekbones—and he doesn’t know what to say.  _Don’t leave_ seems impossible.  _I’ll miss you_  moreso. He realizes something, posed awkwardly in the doorway of his first apartment, next to the fiddle-leaf fig that Yachi had given him as a housewarming gift, next to the shoe rack, where Yamaguchi’s sneakers have been resting beside his for three entire days: that every time he’s been brave, it’s been because Yamaguchi taught him how. 

“Tsukki,” Yamaguchi murmurs, in a tender and comprehending way that seems to say,  _You could have just told me_. 

His mouth meets Kei’s uncertainly at first, like he’s still not sure if he’s read the signals right—and then, after a second or two, after Kei angles his head to reciprocate it, to pull his face closer, closer, as close as it will come, that uncertainty evaporates.

He hums pleasantly, comfortably, hand reaching up to grip the front of Kei’s shirt. He makes that sound again when Kei nudges his lips with his tongue, mouth opening, breath catching on Kei’s breath.

Kei wonders, as if remembering pieces of a dream, if Yamaguchi had seen the same kanji on his test that Kei had the winter before. 念. 願. 喜. 

Yamaguchi misses his train. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

VII. 

 

It happens in the infirmary. Yamaguchi is crying. Snot running down his face, chin all wrinkled. Like he hasn’t since they were kids, with a welt on his cheek and a restrained whimper in his throat. They’ll both be twenty this year. 

“It’s not a big deal,” Kei keeps saying. The nurse’s withering look at that outdoes a good handful of his own. 

And Yamaguchi blurts out, “Why is it always you?” 

Kei doesn’t know. By all accounts, he usually isn’t the one trying to pull off crazy maneuvers or risky saves; he’s never done anything as bad as Kageyama’s drink table collision at their final Interhigh or any of Hinata’s encyclopedia of mishaps in the five years they’ve all been playing together, this side of the court or the other. And yet, in a way, it _is_ always him—with the permanently crooked fingers, the thin shimmering scar on his shin, the four ( _four_ ) separate split lips. This time it’s a fractured wrist. 

“It was your serve,” he says, like that’s all the explanation Yamaguchi will need. (It’s certainly all that that  _he_  ever has.)

“My—” Yamaguchi croaks, and scrubs at his face with the back of his arm, letting out a small, choked noise that just about cleaves Kei’s heart in half with guilt. “Tsukki—it looked—it sounded—really bad…” 

Kei vaguely remembers how it might have looked, and might have sounded. Mostly he remembers the split second it had taken for him to realize that he was going to land wrong, the white-edged crack of pain when he did—he doesn’t remember the noise that had left him with a raw throat, only the echo of it still piercing the absolutely silent Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium when he came to his senses. Only the look on Yamaguchi’s face, contorted and ashen, like just hearing that noise had gutted him. 

“I’m fine,” Kei says while the nurse injects him with more painkillers. “Ow,” he adds, without inflection. 

Yamaguchi will have to be back on the court in ten minutes. Since Kei’s save had won them the set, the referee had called for a long break before the next one so that everyone could regroup. Kei wants to tell him to get a move on, not to waste his time in here when he could be using it to prepare; he swore they’d beat Hinata and Kageyama’s team, didn’t he—but he finds, feeling his limbs get heavier and his brain fuzzier, that he doesn’t want him to leave. 

He feels a presence at his left wrist, the good one, the one attached to the hand that had stopped Ushiwaka’s spike, and curls his fingers around it while he still has feeling in them. He rolls his head over on the thin, uncomfortable pillow to see Yamaguchi, shoulders trembling, holding his hand. 

The nurse steps out for a minute, saying she needs to show the EMTs where to go. Kei kind of wants to laugh. So dramatic. He barely even feels anything. 

“We’ll win for you, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi says, voice breaking.

Kei does laugh at that, or tries to, but all that comes out his a chuffing sound. He’s kind of sleepy. “Give it a rest.” 

He settles further into the pillow, closing his eyes, and lets himself smile, because it’s suddenly what his face has decided to default to. 

Instead of thinking it privately like a person still possessed of a shred of dignity, he mumbles to the darkness, “You proud of me?” 

“Yeah,” Yamaguchi tells him before he can even finish the question. 

Then he feels a pair of lips land on his cheek, and he opens his eyes again. 

It’s a sunny day outside. Through the window next to his cot, the sky is a great blue blur. Yamaguchi is visible against it, his edges blurred, too, but his face is close enough that Kei can see the details—the red rims of his yearning eyes and the leftover tears that have clumped in his eyelashes and the arrangement of freckles on the bridge of his nose that has always been Kei's favorite. 

Kei pulls air into himself until his lungs can hold no more, like he would when Akiteru would take him to the public pool and teach him to float on his back, watching planes. It feels like Yamaguchi’s face and his stay close like that forever, Yamaguchi's breath washing softly over his chin, questions and hesitations in a single, infinite look—and then Yamaguchi’s face tightens, like he’s about to start sobbing afresh, and he drops his elbow clumsily onto the mattress and kisses him, deeply, messily, revealing too much. Kei’s head sinks into the pillow to accommodate it. 

And the only thing Kei can manage to think coherently is: _I should break my wrist every day_. 

“Tsukishima, are you oka—AAAUGH!” 

“Hinata, moron, what are you yelling for?! The sign says quiet voices in the—where are you—oh. Gross.” 

Yamaguchi reels back so fast Kei’s surprised he doesn’t fall out of his folding chair, and Kei says, “Ah.” 

He peers over at the doorway, distinguishing a bright orange blob next to a slightly more elevated black one.  His two least favorite blobs. 

“Hinata, you don’t have to cover your eyes,” Yamaguchi splutters. “We were just—just—”

He’s trying to lie. How cute. The clumsy sounds of the growing argument blend together into formless, weirdly comforting echoes.  Kei is blearily aware that Yamaguchi still hasn’t let go of his hand. 

That’s okay, he thinks, slipping into a cloudy anesthetic sleep and twitching his fingers in Yamaguchi’s grip. He won’t point it out. 

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of weeks ago I did a game on Twitter in which friends (and enemies) could send me a ship and I would write their first kiss "in two tweets." First of all, as I can never shut up ever, I don't think I even once managed it in two. Second of all, my tremendous friend (and enemy) Marks requested Tsukkiyama x7, and because I'll never turn down a chance to fight Marks with my bare hands... 
> 
> Challenge, as they say, accepted. /mic drop
> 
> —
> 
> TRACKS FROM CHILLHOP ESSENTIALS WINTER 2018 THAT I LISTENED TO WHILE WRITING EACH SECTION: 
> 
> I. "larkspur" – Harris Cole  
> II. "Fall's Echoes" – Sleepy Fish  
> III. "I need to paint my walls" – a l e x  
> IV. "With all I am" – Sofasound  
> V. "Crossroads" – Hanz  
> VI. "Slopes" – Philanthrope, Yasper  
> VII. "burn my mind" – Tesk


End file.
